December 11, 2010
There’s been a lot of doom and gloom around Wireless USB. Certainly from a video perspective, it seems that there are more robust choices entering the market although the folks at Veebeam seem to have gotten Ultra Wideband working cross-platform doing 1080p for less than a Benjamin.
Still, I haven’t had a lot of luck trying out the Warpia EasyDock, a WUSB-based solution. When I tried it a few weeks ago with a Core 2 Duo PC, I saw lags in the video performance that was supposed to be set to a relatively low resolution anyway. Trying it this week with a beefy Core i7 laptop, I got blue screens. Some of this may be Warpia’s support. When directed to download the latest driver, I saw two choices that looked like the product I was trying, but the model numbers didn’t match either of them, and there was a stern warning about using the wrong driver potentially causing damage. Oh, just forget it.
I look forward to catching up with the USB Implementers Forum at CES Unveiled next month to hear more abut what’s on tap for WUSB, an approach I still think is interesting for certain kinds of peripherals such as printers (although these, too, are now being addressed with standards such as Wi-Fi Direct) 2011 should be the year for USB 3.0, but failing a dramatic change, it could be the last gasp for Wireless USB.
Tags: AirPlay, amimon, Beebeam, DLNA, EasyDock, Imation, Intel, sibeam, USB 3.0, Warpia, whdi, WiGig, Wireless, wirelesshd, wirleess USB, WUSB
November 25, 2009
Comedian George Carlin recognized that necessity is the mother of invention in a comedy routine (Warning: adult language) on the origin of flamethrowers:
“[A]t some point, some person said to himself, ‘Gee, I’d sure like to set those people on fire over there, but I’m way too far away to get the job done. If only I had something that would throw flame on them.. .””
The observation applies to less violent tasks that have driven home technology since the advent of the TV remote control . Indeed, the Windows 7 feature that probably received the most attention at the launch event was Play To. Play To simply enables one to “push” content such as music as photos to compatible DLNA receivers, and Microsoft used it to show how Windows 7 could simultaneously serve ten video streams (over wired gigabit Ethernet,)
But with Play To, unlike as with a flamethrower, it’s far more likely that you want to “pull” the output from a source than push it. Any serious media receiver around the home such as Sonos, a Logitech SqueezeBox or Apple TV provides a way to navigate sources remotely. This was a usage problem when Apple introduced AirTunes. Another shoe needed to drop and finally did once Apple finally released the Remote software for the iPod touch and iPhone years later.
Microsoft or its partners need to plug the Play To remote hold in similar fashion via iPhone software, Windows Mobile software, or some dedicated device because, in the world of DLNA, the same device can serve as server, renderer and controller, making things very confusing for the consumer. I’ll have more to say on the demands of this level of remote control in the near future.
Tags: AirTunes, digital media adapters, digital media receivers, DLNA, Play To, rremote control, Sonos
